


Redemption

by nihlus



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Don't say I didn't warn you, F/M, Pining, potential ptsd, serious spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5059630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihlus/pseuds/nihlus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie, Thomas finds that he is no longer bound to the mansion of Crimson Peak. He sets out to protect Edith, and finds redemption in a way that he had not expected to find. Spoilers ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> Un-betaed, so if there's issues, please feel free to let me know. 
> 
> This was written to the tune of Hello by Adele, since I felt that it fit fairly well, even if it doesn't fit the story of the song entirely. 
> 
> Concrit is always welcome.

Life as a ghost was not what he’d imagined.

Truth be told, he isn’t sure what he imagined that sort of life to be. He is, _was_ , a man of machines, his thoughts on the presence of ghosts and a life beyond, not one he regularly entertained while alive. Lucille on the other hand, took those thoughts and ran with them, once listening to how she spoke to Mother as though she was really there –

– before breaking into a scream, only to be comforted if he were to hug her tightly. _(Promise me, promise me that you’d never love another. That you’d only love me and me alone. That I would be the light in the dark.)_

_(I promise.)_

Wandering around the edges of Crimson Peak, Thomas starts to look at the entire mansion, finding that he isn’t chained to the boundaries of the property. He hears the faint sounds of Lucille’s fingers on the piano, the same way she used to, the same way Mother used to. Part of him is tempted to see her, but he takes a step away, instead following Edith.

Wherever she walked, the ground glistened. Not in the way of brick-red clay or blood, but a soft shimmer, not unlike pearls or white gold, the softest of halos draping over her lightly the way her nightgown used to – when she used to sleep next to him. The essence of purity, of light and love, despite his own heart. Offered him an opportunity for redemption, when her attempted stabs and cries tore at his remaining sense of humanity, harder than Lucille’s own knife. The two women he’d ever loved, now gone.

He wonders if Edith can see him, the way that she’d seen the manor’s previous victims. He wonders what they would say, what they would do, if they found out about his own demise. He wonders if leaving a discreet message to her about his presence would offer her…what could it offer, truly. Comfort? A sense of relief?

No, no, nothing like that. Those motivations were selfish, and if he were to act on them…he’d be the same man he was before he’d met Edith.

At first, her nights are one and the same. The grey pinned over her heart with the pearl glowing of her light dim and faded. She cried in bed, her nightmares and her own ghosts dogging her every step. He’d tried to fend off all that he could, his own heart breaking when he hears her in pain, in fear. She spends her days with the doctor, and he can see the doctor’s own glow start to lighten her darkness. The touch of grey started to get lighter with time, her eyes no longer as haunted as they had been. He continues to follow Edith, protecting her how he can, staying out of her sight whenever he could.

However, he catches her, just once, sitting in her room just a few doors down form the doctor, crying. Sitting at the windowsill, her eyes look out into the dark, her face streaked and stained with tears. Her hand wipes at her face, her reflection in the window as her nightgown catches her tears. He feels compelled to, wanting to stop her pain by offering his own comfort, and starts to move to stand closer to her, closer than he’s ever been, his hand reaching out for her.

Until he realizes her eyes are staring right into the reflection of the window, right at him. She turns –

– and she screams. She screams, and he watches the grey morph into black, engulfing her heart, and her stomach, with the door slamming open as the doctor rushes in. Her arms are frantic, hitting at him, her cries wrenching Thomas’s heart.

_“He’s here! I saw him, he’s here!”_

_“There’s no one here, Edith, you had a bad dream, you saw nothi-“_

_“I **saw** him! He was right here, Alan, he looked right at me!”_

It took days, _weeks_ , before the black in her heart started to fade to the grey she had been before. It’s painful, but it merely reinforces the point: he was, and never would be, a good man for her. Even in an attempt to comfort her, he sullies the light that she was. He makes a quiet, personal vow, to simply protect her from the darkness of the night. He calls for her name, his tears forming softer spots on the floor of the room as he weeps openly, his own voice crying his apologies. Edith’s eyes and body tells him she hears nothing, and he bites his own lip when he watches the doctor’s love soothe her, his arms wrapping her with the same love and comfort he himself had once done for her.

Even it meant her love for him fading, and her own memory of him lost with time, he promised: he would protect her.

He watches as the doctor’s love does what it had done that night in the room, the black morphing to grey, before fading slowly, day by day. It rebuilds her, with the love for him causing her glow, her grace and purity, to shine all the brighter.

He wonders how many years it’s been when Edith carries a child of her own, her husband doctor by her side as she leans in to kiss the baby’s head. He remembers the way she looks – the same way it had once been on Lucille, a quiet anguish when he realizes that for once, he had never known how his baby died. Watching the baby boy passed to his father, he watches Edith’s heart glow gold instead, the pearl-like sheen lifted into gold. “Carter.” Her voice, like angels, as she names her child, the doctor nodding at her choice. “For my father.”

As Carter grows up into the fine man his grandfather would have been, Edith’s arms grace a second child, and a third, watching her kiss the doctor once, twice, too many times. He protects them, even though his heart aches when he watches her family grow, her love for her family eventually pushing her own love for him aside, taking precedence as her life goes on. Following her family of 5, Thomas watches them grow, become stronger, wiser, protects them from the ghosts of their own and ghosts of the past, the way the supposed guardian angels might have done. He watches as the doctor passes, body passing peacefully into the night as he takes his leave. He grieves as Edith weeps for her husband, the pain compounding when Edith takes ill, her grief driving her to a bedridden life.

He watches the previously vibrant gold now bring itself to a dim, soft glow. He even sits by her, ensuring that he did not, at least, sit where the doctor used to sit. Her light flickers one night, prompting Thomas to indulge in that pain for one last time. Her voice is shaky, and he can barely hear her speak. Sitting in the chair by her bed, he reaches for her hand, taking it gently into his. Her eyes widen, her voice weak as she turns to look at him, finally, for the first time in years. “So cold…my dear Alan.” His tears choke in his throat, her final word tearing him apart as her smile grew to the most beautiful, and the most heartbreaking he’d ever seen. “I’m coming home.”

He feels light, the surge of pain but also happiness causing him to weep, but laugh. His memory lands onto the first time he’d felt something for Edith, a different form of love, one that he’d never known. The candle wrapped between their fingers as they danced, the danger of the flame being put out always there, the sense of excitement and fear and pure _love_ that he’d felt that night…was the same way she’d felt for Alan.

As he finally let go of Edith’s hand, her glow flickered and dimmed, before fading into the night.

His body light, and heart bursting into a sea of sadness and relief, he finds his eyes sleepy. For the first time in years, he can find it in himself to sleep again. Taking her cold hand into his, he tucks it beneath the covers, watching her frame as he folded his arms on the side of the bed, and lay his head down to rest for the final time. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I'm going to include chapters in-between about how he protects Edith's family since personally I don't think the story really needs it per se. If people are interested though, I could definitely try to write one or two, and see how that goes. 
> 
> (Or rather, if the muse strikes me. Feel free to suggest situations you'd like to see Thomas protect Edith's family from, if you're really interested in the idea!)


End file.
